After being forced to abandon the mass-murdering policies of the Great Leap Forward, Mao Zedong sought revenge on those who forced him to act rationally. Mao, who could hold a grudge from one century to the next, didn’t wait long to unleash his revenge. He used smirking teenagers, usually the very children of the political elite, to exact revenge on their own parents. By unleashing chaos and making everyone around him unsafe, Mao cowed his rivals and regained total control over the Communist Party.
Generic Red Guards
Although the Red Guards were molded in mid-twentieth century China, “red guards” are generic. Bands of unruly teenagers bent on mayhem are useful to ideologues everywhere. Today we are seeing the same phenom in college campuses across the nation. The nation is teeming with red guards without a Mao.
The generic red guards, although small in number, are able to control the policies of most universities across the nation. The universities follow their preferred policies in speech and social norms. Scholars with a different point of view cannot exist in those universities. Public figures cannot give speeches without being heckled. It seems incredible that something like fifty student activists can stop a speech by a prominent scholar. On first inspection, it doesn’t make sense.
On Second Inspection…
But once you look closely at the dynamic, it makes perfect sense. The fifty or so student activists that stop speeches, heckle comedians and the such, are the enforcing arm of the hard-left academics and administrators. Like the original red guards, they attack the ideological enemies of their spiritual sponsors. They also provide cover for ideological cleansing of departments and even whole universities, where leftist professors only hire their ideological kin. You have to give them what they want, or else they’ll unleash the mob.
Powerful ideological insiders are using the ‘snowflakes’ for their own ends, while we conservatives are sleep at the helm.
